Memories That Have Faded
by Feygan
Summary: John remembers things from his past life. And the people from his past life remember him. Dark City/Highlander/Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A Drabble series.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Ashes of the Heart

Author: Feygan

Fandoms: Dark City/Highlander  
Rated: G  
Disclaimer: I do not own either Dark City or Highlander.

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As time passed the memories came faster and faster until half the time he didn't know where he was--here or there.

Anna worried about him sometimes, asking if he was all right, if he needed anything.

John thought it was funny how she could even care.

It was strange how the love he had felt for her could fade away. But she wasn't the woman that had been the center of his world, no matter that she wore _Her_ face.

With the change in memories and personality, it became more and more as if She had died and Anna stole her image. They were two very different women, even if sometimes he wanted to weep because their unperfumed skin smelled the same.

And it pained him to admit that the more she fell in love with him, the less he cared about her. Anna was fading out of his heart like water seeping through a sieve. Soon there would be nothing left, just the motions of carrying on.

The dreams of his real life came to him with a painful frequency. Visions of what he could no longer have.

It felt as though everything that had ever mattered to him had been stolen away by the Strangers.

First his home, then his heart, then the woman he had loved (or thought he loved.) And in the end he was left with nothing but ashes.

The feeling of loss was such that some days he just wanted to wallow in his memories of what used to be. He wanted to huddle in his blankets, his eyes squeezed tight shut, and dive head first into his dreams of Home.

And because he dreamed so much, forced himself into the depths of memory, he had found a name for the man that had so thoroughly shaped his world.

Father.

=THE END=

* * *

Title: A Mortal Heart  
Author: Feygan  
Fandoms: Highlander/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Dark City  
Rated: G  
Disclaimer: I do not own either Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander, or Dark City.

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When she was young she had thought her sister would always be there to protect her--right up until the day Buffy had died for the first time (the first _REAL_ time.)

Even after the Resurrection, her life had still been changed forever. Buffy was now mortal in her eyes, and no matter what she wanted, she was never going to be completely safe again.

She had never said anything to Buffy or her friends, but after that Dawn had begun to doubt.

Life was fragile, people died. Mothers died, sisters died, and fathers ran off to Spain with their girlfriends. The world was a strange and dangerous place where nothing ever went as it should.

For years, though she carefully hid it, Dawn felt as though she would never be safe again. Buffy was mortal and bad things happened to good people.

Someday the warriors for good would be a second too late and that would be that. The world would be swallowed by unquenchable fire.

Then, walking down the street from a coffee shop, her arms burdened by translation texts, she had met _Him_ for the first time.

And her world had reshaped itself again.

He resonated inside her in unexplainable ways. He made her heart beat fast and something in her belly tighten.

He said he was just a guy, a college professor of no real importance. But one look in his changeable eyes and she had known different.

They exchanged numbers, shared a few lunches, a few dinners, then a few nights of passionate lovemaking.

It didn't take her long to realize the truth of the matter, that she was in love with Adam Pierson.

After nearly five months of dating they decided to start a life together and moved into a comfortable apartment filled with priceless antiquities.

They spent their time together speaking in long dead languages, making love, and just generally merging everything they were into one. It was the best time of her life.

Then she got pregnant.

The things he said to her in the heat of the moment would later be forgiven, but never forgotten.

He accused her of cheating on him. He demanded to know who she had "spread her legs for" and why. He had actually cried a bit, wanting to know why he wasn't good enough for her.

He almost left her then, and the memory of that pain and fear would haunt her nightmares for years to come.

Then he revealed the reason for his hurtful words, told her that he was sterile, there was no way her baby could be his.

Dawn did the hardest thing she had ever done and told her sister everything. Buffy yelled and screamed about her little sister living with "some guy" and being stupid enough to get pregnant. Then she helped her.

The Council arranged genetic testing. She gave a bit of Adam's stolen blood along with her own.

And when the results came back, she went to him and showed him the poof that her baby--a boy--was really _their_ baby.

The look on his face was something she would never forget. Disbelief, a touch of doubt, and eventually burgeoning belief that this could be real. They were going to have a baby.

Dawn held him when he wept. His joy at having a child was almost painful in its intensity.

It was a miracle, but at first she didn't understand his all-encompassing joy.

Then, under the light of a dozen flickering candles on the couch in their living room, he revealed the secrets he had held from her.

He was not truly, or completely, Adam Pierson. He was not "just a guy" no matter how much he insisted otherwise.

Methos. A name from myth and legend, a god and a devil from primordial memory. An Immortal, oldest of his kind.

On learning that Immortals could not have children, she was scared at first about what her baby might possibly be. She herself was not normal after all.

With a shaking heart, she took Adam--Methos--to see the new Oracles for the Powers.

"_The Key has been given a mortal heart, but is itself eternal. Life is yours to do with as you will... forever. The Key and the oldest Immortal are One._"

She was never going to die. But she wasn't going to be alone either.

She had Methos and she had their son, six pounds, eight ounces of bouncing dark haired baby that grew into being a good man.

Dawn Summers, for the first time since she was a child, felt safe, protected, and above all, loved.

She was happy.

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Then came the phone call that ripped apart her world again.

Their son had disappeared along with a whole coliseum of other people. They were all just gone without a trace.

And even though Methos insisted they would get their son back. Dawn knew nothing would ever be the same.

Her son was gone. The world was a darker place for it.

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=THE END=


	2. Chapter 2

Title: On Alien Shores  
Author: Feygan  
Fandoms: Highlander/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Dark City  
Rated:  
Disclaimer: I do not own either Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander, or Dark City.  
Contact:  
LiveJournal: .com

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It had taken him nearly three years of searching through the alien database, but he thought he had found what he was looking for. A way home.

It took only a little effort for him to change the city-ship's course back toward where the real Earth was supposed to be.

It would take years, but someday he would be able to find the family he had been seeking. He would finally be able to have answers for the questions his dreams left him with.

After all the tinkering the Strangers had done to his memories, he only had a few tatters of real memory, and they were sadly out of order.

He dreamed of swords, flashing lights, and a beautiful woman surrounded by a green glow that made him feel warm inside, safe in a way he had never imagined.

He didn't know who she was, but he knew she was important to who he used to be, to who he wanted to be again someday.

John began new searches through the database, trying to see if the Strangers had kept some record of his stolen memories.

He couldn't really explain his ease with learning a completely alien language, but he appreciated it. Though it made him question even more what kind of man he had once been.

Had he been a scholar? A blue-collar handyman? A policeman? A criminal?

It frustrated him to only have a few scattered memories of who he used to be.

More than anything he wanted to know who he had been. And knowing that even his name--John Murdoch--wasn't his own... it just made it harder for him to go on.

Everything that made him who he was was nothing but a lie.

Just knowing that he was a fake made him wonder if his original self would even have liked what he had become. Or if he would like the man he used to be.

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John took to avoiding Anna. There was just something so disturbing about being around her. She wasn't the woman he loved, though there were shadows of Emma everywhere around her. And just thinking about the fact that he maybe didn't even really love Emma, that all his emotions for her were nothing but manufactured memories stolen from the minds of other people...

It made him sick to the center of his soul.

Some days he felt like a ghost haunting the places and times where John Murdoch used to live. Like a thief wandering around in alien skin, pretending at being a man he had never met.

It was on those days that he tried his hardest to call up what few memories he had managed to dig up of the Before. Of the man he called Father in his head, and the beautiful brown haired woman that smiled at him as though he was one of the centers of her world.

It made him ache for all that he had lost without ever even knowing. It made this life here on this alien world even more empty and unreal.

He was a stranger washed up on unfamiliar shores with nothing to hold him to the life of his past but vague memories that he couldn't even validate as ever having been real.

Maybe the flashes of memory he experienced were nothing more than the remnants of a previous memory download. Maybe those memories that he had put so much of his heart and soul into were nothing more than the remnants of another soul, another lie that he had been fed by the Strangers and by Dr. Schreber.

Maybe everything he did now was nothing more than a fruitless experiment in disappointed dreams. He would take them all back to Earth and find out that everything he had buried his soul in was nothing but smoke with no flame. There would be no family waiting, no name that he could reclaim, nothing.

That was his worst fear. That everything he did now was useless.

Sometimes he thought about what it would have been like if he had just let things go on as they were. If he hadn't woken up to the fact that everything he knew wasn't real.

Maybe then he would still love Emma, or Anna, or whatever name they decided to give her. He would never have to know that there love wasn't real, because long as he didn't know it wasn't, what did it really hurt? He would have still been happy with her.

But that was all over now, because there was no way he could go back to his ignorant state. The demons had been let out of the box, Pandora's dress was already burning, and he was taking the ship back to Earth to find out if there was anything left there for him or if everything was useless.

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He spent a lot of time alone in his apartment, just laying on his back in bed staring at the ceiling.

He knew it was probably incredibly juvenile to spend most of his time sulking in his room, but there really wasn't anything else he wanted to do.

The ship was fully automated, and since he commanded all the resources on board it wasn't like he had to work for money or anything. And even if he had had any desire to hold down a job, just knowing that nothing here was real took away from his drive to do anything.

He spent his time imagining what life on Earth was going to be like. To live his own life for the first time in he didn't even know how long.

And that was part of what made things so terrible. He didn't know how long he and any of the others had been aboard this city-ship. It could have been two years, three, ten, or maybe a hundred or a thousand. They might make it all the way back to Earth and find that nothing existed, that humanity was long gone and they were alone.

It terrified him, but he refused to allow himself to dwell on that idea. He would not throw away hope until it was wrested from his grasping, cold dead fingers.

Because in the end, after everything he had discovered, the dream of Earth was all he had left. The Strangers had burned everything else, and Dr. Schreber had scattered the ashes.

At least when he lay alone on his bed, he could imagine the touch of sunlight on a beautiful Earth. He could imagine the love of a family he couldn't name. And he could make himself believe that everything was going to be better, now that the Strangers were gone and they were free.

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=THE END=

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End file.
